PhilinYuma
Well-known member
Today is Hiroshima day
I am listening to the Midnight Special show on WFMT in Chicago, as I have for 50 years. It is a folk music show and all the folk singers who were not alive, as I was, upon that day are singing about the horrors of the dropping of the Bomb.. And yes, some of the songs are beautiful and most are sad and some point the finger at the crews who obeyed orders, and the one on now is based on the Silkie song (Joan Baez, know it?) and the singer, in the persona of a little Japanese girl, sings "And I am dead, and I am dead." And truly, it was a sad and dreadful thing.
There is no "Winnie' day. Winnie was my cousin, perhaps nine when the conventional German bomb got my grandad, showered my grandma's face with glass and burned poor Winnie. I was told that she lived for a few days. I hope that they gave her lots of morphine.
Well, the German bomber was just doing his duty, and after the war, perhaps he got together with his British and American counterparts to swap tall stories. But here's to you Winnie. You were someone I knew, not a political statement, and as you discovered, your mundane death was as real and agonizing as that of the little girl in the songs. I don't know why you were Catholic while my dad, your Uncle Roger, was Protestant, but lux perpetua luceat vos, et requiescat in pace.
I am listening to the Midnight Special show on WFMT in Chicago, as I have for 50 years. It is a folk music show and all the folk singers who were not alive, as I was, upon that day are singing about the horrors of the dropping of the Bomb.. And yes, some of the songs are beautiful and most are sad and some point the finger at the crews who obeyed orders, and the one on now is based on the Silkie song (Joan Baez, know it?) and the singer, in the persona of a little Japanese girl, sings "And I am dead, and I am dead." And truly, it was a sad and dreadful thing.
There is no "Winnie' day. Winnie was my cousin, perhaps nine when the conventional German bomb got my grandad, showered my grandma's face with glass and burned poor Winnie. I was told that she lived for a few days. I hope that they gave her lots of morphine.
Well, the German bomber was just doing his duty, and after the war, perhaps he got together with his British and American counterparts to swap tall stories. But here's to you Winnie. You were someone I knew, not a political statement, and as you discovered, your mundane death was as real and agonizing as that of the little girl in the songs. I don't know why you were Catholic while my dad, your Uncle Roger, was Protestant, but lux perpetua luceat vos, et requiescat in pace.
